


the wounded ones

by clarkestrife



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Biting, Blood and Injury, Comfort/Angst, F/F, Masturbation, clarke wears the warpaint in this relationship, deserts both literal and metaphorical, lexa loves motorcycles, sweet rides, the women of the 100 are desert warrior badasses and vaguely resemble the vuvalini, uhhh, vague dirty talk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:31:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5497148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarkestrife/pseuds/clarkestrife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>lexa rides alone, until she meets clarke in the middle of the desert.</p><p>or; the mad max fury road au. </p><p>feat. lexa being kinda like max and clarke being kinda like imperator furiosa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> as with so many things, what was meant to be a one-shot turned into a 10k+ fic. late to the party with a fury road au obviously, but it's been in the works for some time. the plot will not stick super close to the movie storyline. more inspired by.
> 
> i can see both sides of lexa/max & clarke/furiosa and vice/versa, but for this fic, i felt like these characterizations matched better. 
> 
> enjoy.

The desert tears at her heels and bites at sand in the corners of her eyes, but at least it knows who she is.

There’s no questions between them. No secrets. There’s the slick of her palms wrapped in leather, gripping the handlebars like she’s part of the bike, part of its bone, flexing to keep her muscles loose. There’s the steady roar-stream-hum of the engine. It sounds like dreams and nightmares all at once. Screaming and sighing. Quiet, quiet, rage. 

Lexa rides over stretches of sand as long and vast as the sea, but nothing gives life here. Nothing swims beneath the surface. The sand just takes and takes and takes until it’s all burned away.

With every mile she covers Lexa knows she’s trying to do the impossible.

To outrun death.

Because death is all that’s left out here. The things that are still alive, that haven’t given their bones to the earth just yet, are on a long, long ride to doing so. A trip toward the eternity of sun-baked emptiness.

Lexa leans over the bike and ignores the sting of sand in her lungs, the wind whipping thick clouds into coughs, the hard-won ache of the throttle between her thighs. She wipes her goggles for the thousandth time that day and is rewarded with a moment of clarity before the sand begins to layer upon them once more.

Above her, the sky rumbles deep and low in its gut. She can’t hear it over the roar of the bike but she can see the gray winds forming in the distance, the clouds taking shape, and the storm that will soon set on the horizon.

She’s headed right for it.

Her attention shifts to the gas gauge just above her knuckles. Though dirt coats the curved glass, she can see the needle hovering dangerously low.

She grits her teeth and bites down on grains of sand. 

The winds pick up with the oncoming storm, sending the first waves of torrential sand-pour toward her. The sun has disappeared behind it all. She can only guess at its position in the sky, how low to the horizon it hovers, how much time she has left before she’s left not only in danger but in darkness.

Lexa lowers her head against the storm and tries to suck in air through the bandana over her mouth and nose, but it’s coming thicker now and she can barely catch a breath. It’s hardly unusual conditions, but it’s pebbles in her lungs and the taste of the desert on her tongue and when she checks the gas gauge again, her stomach flips.

The barely visible needle wobbles over empty.

Lexa heads further into the storm.

It’s not like she has much of a choice. Out here, the chances are the same in any direction, so she picks one and stays the course. The sound of the howling wind and shifting earth compete with the roar of the motorcycle. Lexa dreads the silence. 

Silence means death.

She’s coming up on a dune, like a jagged shoulder of the earth, stuck up from the sand and rolling out in waves. The bike takes the slight incline easily, its own gale force barreling into the storm, and when she reaches the top of the dune she doesn’t slow down. She needs the momentum.

The ground drops out from under her at the peak of the dune and the bike careens off the edge, Lexa bracing herself on top of it, every muscle tensed, every bone in her body rattling with the engine that’s about to run out of life. 

For a moment, or a few, she’s flying.

When she lands hard back on the ground, she only has a split-second to identify something in front of her--long and wrapped up, half-buried in the sand--before she yanks the handlebars left to avoid it and sends the bike shredding into the ground, the sudden movement twisting it under her, and she’s parallel to the desert as she tries to regain control of it before it’s gone, the sound of the engine ripped away, the force of her body hitting the sand like a blow to the head, the feeling of something sharp at her leg, and then everything goes black.

***

When Lexa opens her eyes, the world is painted blue.

There’s a single spot of orange against the blue--brightness licking the darkness, flickering before her eyes as she blinks, and she thinks dully that it’s the only light for miles and miles around.

An easy thing for anyone to spot.

Her muscles groan as she forces her fingers to flex, trembling in pain, and she cups as much sand as she can in her hands before shoving it all toward the light.

The sand rains down on the light and it’s gone, leaving only smoke where light once was.

A voice to her right startles her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The voice is close to her, close enough to easily inflict damage, and Lexa bites down to keep herself from hissing in pain when strong hands grip her shoulders and flip her over onto her back.

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust. Lexa blinks at the owner of the voice and the hands and a very accusatory expression.

A woman leans over Lexa. Her eyes are wide and bright against her shaved head and her features stand out against black warpaint smudged over the top half of her face. It’s young, Lexa realizes. That face. It can’t be much older than she is. A metal shoulder guard gleams just under her chin. The sound of breathing and the scrape of metal accompany the woman as she glares at Lexa.

The gun pointed directly at Lexa’s face is actually the last thing she notices.

“You wrecked my bike.” The words are stuck on grains of sand in her throat and Lexa has to cough to get them out, half-strained and rough on her tongue.

“So you wrecked my fire?” The woman levels the gun at her forehead.

“Your fire was a target on your back.” Lexa pushes the gun aside so she can sit up. Her chest aches and she’s pretty positive there’s a broken rib or two in there. She coughs again and spits out blood, tasting it where it splits her lip. 

The woman takes a step backwards but readjusts the gun on her shoulder and continues to point it at Lexa. “The only thing that’s almost killed me today is you.”

Lexa reaches up to pull her goggles off before she realizes they’re around her neck. She fights to tug the strap up and off of her head, her hand brushing her temple. She seethes in pain, the quickness of it, the sting. When she brings her fingers away from her temple, they’re covered silk-dark in blood. She blinks. She looks up at the woman.

“I wrecked my bike to keep from hitting you,” Lexa says sharply.

Something that looks suspiciously like satisfaction flashes across the woman’s face. “So you admit that you wrecked your own damn bike. Not me.”

Lexa grits her teeth and braces both hands on the ground, trying to see if she can stand up. The woman, though, is quick to press the gun against her wounded temple. Lexa hisses. “I should’ve just run you over.”

“What do you want?” The woman asks. She shifts her weight slightly, but Lexa doesn’t miss it; there’s a pack and a small canteen behind her that she attempts to hide. Lexa looks up at her and raises an eyebrow.

“I said, what do you want,” the woman persists. “I don’t have anything that will keep you alive out here. Nothing that can fix your damn bike, that’s for sure. So why don’t you just keep moving and in return, I won’t kill you?”

Lexa fixes her with a bored glare. The woman isn’t backing down, but she also doesn’t look like she’s ready to pull the trigger anytime soon.

Finally, Lexa sighs. “I cannot keep moving, since you ruined my only form of transportation.”

The woman gestures at her with the gun. “Looks like you’ve got two legs.”

Lexa licks her lips and is rewarded with the cold burn of dehydration; her lips are chapped and her skin feels like it will crack if she moves too much. “I’m not going anywhere at night. It’s too dangerous.” The night stretches on and on around them, a chill at her back and seeping into her fingertips. As stupid as the fire was, Lexa misses the chance for its warmth.

Lexa looks sharply at the woman. “You don’t kill me and I’ll show you how to build a fire that won’t attract every gas-guzzling monster for miles around.” The woman’s eyes are still narrowed; her jaw is still set and her shoulders are still tight as she holds the gun. “In the morning, we’ll go our separate ways. Alive.”

The woman frowns. Lexa merely waits. 

She finally lowers her gun, slinging it at her left side. For the first time Lexa notices that the hand holding the gun is metal--in fact, the arm up to the elbow is all made of metal, ratcheted together with rusty bolts and black steel rods. Standing like that, her right hand at her waist and her hip stuck slightly out with her weight resting on one side, the woman gives off an attitude that Lexa does not like nor entirely trust.

“Fine,” the woman says.

Lexa tests the extent of her injuries. She stretches her arms carefully and flexes her fingers again, curls her wrists, but doesn’t try to stand just yet. She wipes at the blood dripping down her temple. The woman drops down in front of Lexa in a crouch. She doesn’t meet Lexa’s eyes, but instead her gaze flickers just beside it, where Lexa can feel the pain throbbing against her skull.

The woman sighs. It almost sounds annoyed. “I can’t believe you almost kill me and I’m the one who has to patch you up.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Lexa says. The woman smiles and this time it’s all satisfaction.

Lexa thinks she might hate this woman a little bit.

“You can’t even see the wound. Besides,” the woman says, unraveling a small leather pouch and pulling out a few tiny leaves from one of the pockets, “I know what I’m doing.”

She reaches up to press the herbs to Lexa’s temple, but Lexa’s hand on the woman’s wrist stops her. “Where did you get those?” Lexa’s voice is low, the awe seeping through into her words.

The woman hesitates. She looks as though as she’s trying to decide on an answer before she finally says, “Nowhere that exists anymore.”

Up close, the woman’s eyes stand out even more from her warpaint, two shining diamonds against the blue velvet sky, her human hand hovering just beside Lexa’s head, fingers steady. Lexa can smell the scent of the herbs and their oils, slightly sweet and minty, with something like citrus underneath. 

Then pain sizzles through the side of her head and Lexa hisses, her hand coming up to smack the woman’s away, but this time the woman’s metal arm catches Lexa around the wrist and stays her hand, no matter how many force Lexa exudes.

The woman smiles again. It’s disarming and out of place in the blackness and annoyingly smug. “This might sting.”

Lexa begrudgingly stays still as the woman cleans her wound and carefully wipes at the blood. Silence settles between them and Lexa lets herself relax just slightly, her gaze scanning the horizon for danger, but finding nothing except the smooth shadows of the dunes. 

“I’m Clarke.” 

Lexa’s gaze comes back to meet the woman’s eyes. Clarke blinks and then returns to focusing on the wound. “In case you were wondering.”

Silence falls again. Lexa looks at her bike, torn asunder in the sand, the front tire half-spinning with the occasional gust of wind, and its broken silhouette against the sky, black bones and scratched metal, like part of Clarke kneeling in front of her, her touch sure and surprisingly gentle. “Lexa,” she says.

Clarke smiles for the third time and this one is different still than the others. More at ease, as if they’re meeting in a crowd in the middle of the day, exchanging a smile before going on their way, rather than alone in a desert that would just as soon bury them as protect them.

When she’s finished cleaning the cut, Clarke takes the edge of her shirt and tears off an inch-wide strip of it all along the hem, her metal fingers slicing cleanly through the fabric. She ties it around Lexa’s head before Lexa can protest. The shirt is a little too short for her now, and Lexa can see the tan curve of Clarke’s stomach when she reaches into her pack, the fabric hitched up above her hips.

“Closest thing to a bandage I’ve got,” Clarke says, meeting Lexa’s eyes with a brief smile before turning away. “Now take off your pants.”

Lexa nearly chokes. “What?”

Clarke ignores her, rummaging through her pack once more. Lexa looks down at her leg. As soon as she sees the blood soaking through her pant leg, the pain sinks into her consciousness. She realizes it feels like it’s on fire.

It’s no small feat trying to remove her pants in a way that’s semi-dignified while trying not to move her injured muscles too much, but Clarke doesn’t help, perhaps because she knows Lexa would rip her hand off if she tried.

When she finally manages, she immediately shivers at the wind sweeping across her bare skin. She covers her lap with the pants and tries to block the cold.

Clarke finally turns around and applies the same stinging salve to Lexa’s wound, a cut shredded into her skin just below her knee, running along the side of her calf. This time Lexa is ready for it, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

Clarke clicks her tongue. “This needs stitches,” she mutters, almost to herself.

“I’ll manage.” Lexa starts to move away.

Clarke’s hand on her thigh stops her. Lexa freezes, mostly in surprise—it seems like Clarke’s hand landed a bit higher than she meant for it too. Clarke’s eyes widen before she leans back, puling her hand away as if Lexa’s skin burns.

“I’ll, um.” Clarke turns to her pack to aimlessly root through it. It would be amusing if Lexa wasn’t too exhausted and annoyed and hungry to find much amusing at the moment.

Clarke turns back to Lexa. She stares at the wound as if trying to figure out a solution.

“Why do you care?” 

The words are out of Lexa’s mouth before she can stop them. 

Clarke’s expression flickers through several emotions before settling on confusion.

“You don’t need to help me,” Lexa says. She grips the fabric of the pants a little tighter in her fists. “If I die out here, it’s not on you.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “You know, most people would just say thank you.” She glances over at the bike parts strewn about the sand. “Do you have any wire in that?”

Lexa almost sighs. It’s clear that Clarke is going to ignore just about anything she has to say, and she’s too tired to put up a fight. The desert has taken and taken and taken from her and it’s finally taken the one thing she had to her name. She nods.

Making her way over to the bike, Clarke picks up various pieces and sets them back down before she finally settles on part of the engine, pulling out a long wire from the cords. Her metal arm is able to tear the engine apart with ease.

She comes back to Lexa, who stops herself from scooting away, but it’s a little bit intimidating.

Clarke holds up the wire. “Build your fire. It’ll sterilize this.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Clarke sits in the sand and begins to sharpen the end of the wire with her metal fingers. “I wish I was.”

Lexa swallows and brushes her fingertips over her temple. It still aches, but it’s not that bad. She smells mint leaves and citrus and something earthy, more like the soft, cold sand beneath the layer baked all day by the sun. 

Like Clarke, sun-touched and chapped lips and ashen clothes, eyes bright below her brow.

***

“Where were you headed?” Clarke asks when they’re leaning against the bike, propped up on the dune. Lexa showed her how to dig out the sand around them to form a sort of valley, built up on three sides and shielded from view as best they can. She would’ve preferred to do it herself, but given the state of her injuries, it was more pointing and huffing when Clarke didn’t do it exactly the way she wanted.

Clarke’s hands are slick with blood, Lexa’s blood, shining like gold in the firelight. Lexa keeps fighting to look away, but her eyes always wander back, both fascinated and mildly horrified by what she’s allowing Clarke to do to her leg.

The pain is staggering. 

Lexa doesn’t answer her question, but instead watches the flames curl in and around each other for warmth instead of watching the wire tug mercilessly on the gash in her skin. “Why were you buried in the sand?”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “So you’re the only one who gets to ask questions?”

When Lexa still doesn’t answer, Clarke raises her eyebrows and digs her feet into the sand closer to the fire. “I was waiting,” she says. “Well. Hiding, I guess.”

Lexa doesn’t ask for more, but just waits. Clarke will fill the silence between them, that much she can tell, but she doesn’t mind listening. Clarke’s voice is smooth and low, throaty in a way that sound natural instead of roughened by miles and miles of breathing in sand. Lexa tries to concentrate on the sound, staring hard at the fire, struggling not to pass out from the pain.

“I came from the citadel,” Clarke says. 

She says it like what it’s not: easy. Expected. Escapable. She says it like it’s not the capital of everything the desert fears.

“I’m an imperator there. Was an imperator. I stole a war rig to try and help the girls escape that were being...” she swallows. “Being kept there. We made it out of the city, pretty far along the back roads, but my allies betrayed me and left me for dead.” Her voice is as steady as ever. “Took the rig, probably the girls, too. They threw me out of the vehicle and when I woke up, I could barely move. When I heard an engine in the distance I thought they’d come back to finish me off. I buried myself and my things here in the sand to stay hidden.” She unearths a small canteen from the sand beside her. She takes a swig, then offers it to Lexa without a glance.

Lexa hesitates, but takes the canteen, her warm fingers brushing against Clarke’s cold metal ones. When she sips from it, her eyes flutter shut in relief. Water. 

She hands the canteen back, but again Clarke doesn’t spare her a glance. Instead she keeps her eyes trained her fingers working at Lexa’s skin. 

Lexa doesn’t have to ask to know what she sees there, reflected in the blood and sand and flickering firelight: the memory of all the pain she’s been a part of, dissolving into sparks under the sky but never truly gone. The heat of it on her skin. The screams, the tires burning against the sand, the way the world looks from the side of the road.

Lexa knows because she can see it in Clarke’s eyes; the hollows. The hunger for more. She knows because she recognizes it for what it is: weakness.

The fire lights up Clarke’s eyes but it casts shadows where it leads away from her body and into the cold night. This close, Clarke is everything beautiful and dangerous about the road: Lexa watches her toned arms and muscled thighs, the way her fingers smooth over Lexa’s leg, the way her knuckles are rough where the wind has sanded them down. Clarke’s warpaint shines on her skin. Lexa wonders if she’s always ready to go into battle, or if it’s just another thing to remind herself that she’s been there.

“You haven’t asked the most obvious question,” Clarke says.

Lexa glances at her. Clarke raises her metal arm, a smirk slowly appearing on her lips as she watches Lexa silently debate whether or not to give in.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Lexa finally says.

“Because you’re trying to be polite, or because you don’t want to know?”

Lexa tilts her head. “The latter.”

Clarke laughs, of all things.

It feels so strange, Lexa thinks. To be sitting beside someone, someone who wants to tell her things, maybe, someone who wants to be known. It feels like taking on the burden of another life, a responsibility that she knows it’s dangerous to have. She cannot care about Clarke. Not if she expects to stay alive.

“Done.” Clarke sits back. “You can put your pants back on.”

Lexa blinks at her. When she looks down at her leg, it’s horrifying in a new way, but at least it’s not an open wound. The wire is black, thicker than ideal, and it pokes out of her skin like she’s half-sewn up. Lexa has to hand it to Clarke, though: it’s a clean job, as clean as can be expected in the middle of the desert with wind sweeping grains of sand toward them. The ends are tied off and when Lexa moves, it doesn’t burn quite as intensely. 

She nods a thank-you to Clarke.

“So what about you?” Clarke looks up at her now, the fire still dancing in the hollows under her cheekbones, the curve of her lips, the smudges of her warpaint. “Are you going to tell me your story, Lexa?” The way Clarke says her name makes Lexa’s stomach flip.

Now it’s Lexa who looks at the fire, and sees everything she burned away inside of it. “There’s nothing to tell,” she says simply.

There’s a reason she keeps the road in front of her, the ground she’s covered at her back. The desert doesn’t have to keep her secrets for her because she’s never released them into the day or the night, the orange or the blue, the glow or the darkness.

It’s easy to leave things behind.

***

When Lexa kicks sand over the fire this time, Clarke doesn’t protest. 

Lexa pulls her jacket tighter around her and ties her bandana around her nose and mouth. She puts her goggles back on, too. A storm in the middle of the night could leave them both blind and suffocated before they even have the chance to wake up. 

Clarke stashes her pack under head as a makeshift pillow, but she doesn’t have anything to cover herself beyond the clothes she wears: torn pants, heavy boots and a sleeveless shirt ripped in several places. It’s not long before Lexa can hear her teeth chattering even with the dunes blocking the worst of the wind. Clarke angles herself so that she’s facing the wall of sand that bridges the steepest dune, her back to Lexa, her shoulders stiff.

Lexa tries to ignore it. Clarke is not her responsibility. Just because she bandaged up Lexa--after being the reason she was wounded in the first place--doesn’t mean Lexa owes her. It doesn’t mean anything, really. Not even if Clarke’s shirt is a little bit shorter now and the wind wraps around her a little bit colder. Not even if Lexa suspects that Clarke is actually trustworthy.

Lexa sees only darkness on the backs of her eyelids; she hears the wind calling out in swirls over the dunes, feels it sweep across the streak of her face still showing between her goggles and bandana. She feels Clarke’s presence only a few feet away. 

Without a word, Lexa gets up and crosses the few feet between them, taking care not to put too much weight on her injured leg. She shrugs out of her jacket, covers Clarke with half of it, and then lays down next to her, shifting and pressing her back to Clarke’s so that she’s protected from both sides. She pulls the remaining side of the jacket over her own shoulder. It’s hardly as warm as it was when she was actually wearing it, but.

Clarke jerks when Lexa first touches her. Up close, Lexa can hear the rusted creak of her metal arm and the sharp intake of breath, feels it through the thin fabric of Clarke’s shirt. However, she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t acknowledge Clarke, nor their situation, nor the fact that they are strangers who both seem to possess the ability and the tools needed to kill each other if it should come to it. Lexa can’t name what exactly makes her think it won’t. All she knows is that Clarke must feel it, too. Back to back and surrounded by the desert, Lexa allows her shoulders to soften and her legs to uncurl, the warmth of Clarke beside her. 

When she closes her eyes this time, she sees bright eyes against dark skin and the silhouette of a warrior shining against the mountainous dunes, sand blowing at her feet and the sun on her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading. you can find me at clarkestrife.tumblr.com.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my apologies for the wait. life got a bit crazy after the holiday break was over.
> 
> hope you enjoy the chapter.

When Lexa opens her eyes, the world is gold once more.

And she’s alone.

She blinks, stretching out her stiff limbs, gasping in pain as the accident from yesterday comes rushing back into her consciousness. It _all_ comes back—her body crushed against the sand, the girl she unburied, warm fire and cold metal and the night that wouldn’t end.

And now she is here, alone.

Lexa manages to pull herself to her feet for the first time since catapulting headfirst into the dunes. She’s run out of patience for her injuries now; enough is enough and she needs to get moving. Where, she isn’t sure, nor how, but why, she knows better than she knows her bones.

There’s movement over the nearest dune, a shadow sloping and the sound of footsteps, and Lexa pulls the dagger from her belt quick and silent. She lowers into a crouch, but her muscles scream instantly, bruised and battered, and Lexa bites her lip until it bleeds.

Clarke appears over the horizon.

Lexa frowns and lowers her dagger, though she doesn’t sheath it, and rises achingly to her feet.

Clarke slides down the dunes, her metal hand braced on the hillside as her feet and gravity carry her toward the valley where Lexa stands. Clarke is like an apparition, even in daylight, and her spirit is dark against gold sand. Lexa wonders if Clarke can see herself in the shadows; if she knows how much she stands out against the light.

“You didn’t wake me,” Lexa says. 

Clarke doesn’t bother looking at her as she begins to gather what’s left of her things beside the ashen ruins of the fire. “I thought maybe we’d—” she shakes her head with a wry smile that almost doesn’t make it. “Thought we might get lucky and have crashed near something civilized.”

Lexa can hear in her voice that she knows how foolish it is to have hope like that.

“Anyway.” Clarke stands and hikes her pack higher on her shoulders. “How’s your leg?”

“Hurts,” Lexa says.

Clarke purses her lips like she knows that’s an understatement. Like she can see right through her.

Lexa clenches her fist.

Then Clarke is stepping closer, and suddenly she’s in Lexa’s personal space and it takes everything Lexa has to keep herself from stepping backward. Clarke’s eyes flicker briefly to hers. Then she sinks to her knees and before Lexa has anything to say about it Clarke is pulling up her pant leg to check the wound.

Lexa watches her impassively. She can feel Clarke’s fingertips skating across her skin and even though the wound burns, Clarke’s touch is somehow cool, like wind fluttering over it.

“You’ll live,” Clarke says with a grimace.

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

Clarke ignores her. “The next chance you get, you need to clean it. Get proper stitches. It won’t heal right anyway, but you can keep it leaving a nastier scar than it already will.”

Lexa shrugs. She’s hardly a stranger to scars. Her body is marked with them; some she remembers, some she doesn’t, and some she comes across unexpectedly at times, the sudden raised skin bringing a memory rushing back.

Typically, the memories that leave scars are the ones she’s happy to leave at the horizon.

When Clarke stands up again she’s nearly nose-to-nose with Lexa. Clarke focuses on the bandana tied across Lexa’s forehead. With Clarke not watching her, Lexa takes a moment to observe her—her eyes the color of the moonlight sky, freckles dusted atop her cheeks, a mole just above her lip. She looks like she’s more comfortable when she’s smiling. She looks nothing like Lexa feels.

“We should really clean that again too,” Clarke says softly, fingertips brushing the bandana. Then, it’s her who steps back, as if suddenly realizing where she is.

Lexa raises her chin stiffly. “There is no _we.”_

Hurt flickers across Clarke’s face, but it’s quickly rearranged to match Lexa’s. Reserved indifference. 

“All right, then.” The Clarke who got lost in a moment of trying to take Lexa’s pain away is gone and replaced with the Clarke who seems to be willing herself to find the strength to abandon Lexa in the desert. “Well.” She opens her mouth, hesitates, and finally closes it again. She hands a canteen to Lexa. When Lexa takes it, she hears it slosh with water.

Lexa nods at her once. “Thank you, Clarke.” She swallows. “Good luck.” With every bit of strength she can muster, she tries to walk away as if her body doesn’t scream with every step. She feels Clarke’s eyes on her, but doesn’t hear her when she says softly in the desert winds, “You too.”

***

Leaving the bike behind almost hurts worse than her injuries. Almost. The bike wasn’t just a necessity, though it most certainly was that—it had felt like part of Lexa, like an extension of herself that she’s slowly melded with, mixing her blood with gasoline and heading toward the sun. Lexa knows her limits, and she knows that trying to push a heavy half-wrecked hunk of metal through the sand is certain death, especially in her current state. Her body will barely make the trip as it is.

When night falls, Lexa half-collapses under a spindly cactus plant. She can’t lean against it, so she curls up into herself and tightens her jacket around her. If she concentrates, the leather still smells like smoke and a girl with flowers in her pockets.

So she doesn't concentrate.

The desert gets strange at night. It’s strange during the day, a special sun-blazed brand of oddity, all harsh heat and thick air and empty, empty roads.

During the night, when everything cools off and the sun hides below the horizon and suddenly there’s silence, it feels like a waking dream.

Like nothing will be real until the sun comes up again.

Daybreak comes and her skin cracks in the dry winds. She feels ashen, half-bled, weaker with every breath. Every direction speaks only of emptiness. Every horizon waves her away.

That night she tries to drink from the canteen that Clarke gave her, but she’s waited too long and her hands shake too much and her head pulses. The canteen falls onto the sand and spills nearly all its contents without ceremony. Lexa thinks if she were someone else, she might cry.

But there are no tears left in her body; only salt.

On the third night, she lays down under the stars, on the open sand, without care for who might find her, because she knows she will not wake up again.

***

When Lexa opens her eyes, she nearly groans out loud with frustration.

Death was supposed to be swift; it was supposed to carry her away in her sleep and leave her body to the birds and her bones to the earth. She was supposed to return to the dust that settled her.

Instead, she is in what looks like a makeshift tent with burlap walls, the door flapping open occasionally to reveal a starry sky, and voices carry over the sound of a crackling fire.

The smell of roasted meat reaches the tent and she does groan this time. Hunger ceases to have meaning; her stomach feels like nothing will satisfy it, neither empty or full, and she turns onto her side and retches at the thought of eating while wanting desperately to feel whole again. It’s nothing but bile, and barely that—her body has given nearly all it has already.

A shadow crosses the tent and Lexa is too weak to prepare herself, but her hand stretches toward her belt anyway. She feels at the leather.

Her dagger is gone.

She blinks up at the person who pulls back the tent flap. They are silhouetted against fire and moon. 

“Clarke!” The person’s voice is unfamiliar but sweet, young, and tinged with confidence. The person glances away from Lexa, toward the outside. “She’s…awake.” The words seem to have distaste to them. 

Lexa frowns.

Another shadow, more footsteps, more chatter, and then Lexa is not alone in the tent anymore. Despite her weakness, she tries to push herself into a sitting position. 

A soft hand on her shoulder stops her. “Don’t. You need to rest.”

This voice Lexa knows, and she’s both relieved and incredulous to hear it.

“What did you do?” Lexa croaks.

Instead of answering, Clarke hands her a canteen. Lexa takes it and drinks, gulping it like she's never tasted it before, and some of it spills but it doesn’t seem to matter this time, because there is more where this came from. She nearly cries out in exhaustion when the water seeps into her blood, reminding her little by little how much she has lost.

“Clarke.” The name forms on Lexa’s tongue. “What did you do?”

“Besides save your life? Again?” Clarke caps the canteen and sets it beside her. Lexa gets a better look at where they are; she lays on a small cot tucked into the edge of the tent, which is larger than she thought at first, while Clarke hovers near the door. Moonlight occasionally slices through the tent flap and strikes across Clarke’s face, lights up her metal arm, and she seems like a stranger in the shadows. 

Maybe she is.

“Why am I here?” Lexa says, hating that the words come out sounding petulant.

She can’t see Clarke roll her eyes, but she can feel it before Clarke speaks again. “You have a serious problem with gratitude, you know that?” Before Lexa can reply, she continues. “I found you half-dead in the desert. You were ahead of me for a long time, and when you disappeared, I doubled back to find you. I was…” she hesitates, then pushes on. “I was worried about you.” Her hair falls in her face, glowing with blue moonlight and orange fire and hiding her eyes. “I couldn’t forgive myself if I left you to die out there.”

Lexa stares levelly at Clarke. “That was weakness.”

“Whatever, Lexa.” Clarke uncaps the canteen and drinks from it herself just to have something to do.

“I mean it.” Lexa grunts as she manages to get her weight onto her hands. “Worrying about others will only slow you down. You cannot survive that way.” With painful, barely-there strength, she sits up and swings her legs over the cot. The sand is cold beneath her feet.

“There are other ways to survive.” Clarke’s tone is just as cold.

Lexa chooses not to dignify this with an answer.

Someone calls Clarke’s name from outside; someone different than the person who had first brought her in. How many people are in this camp, Lexa wonders. How many do they have to worry about protecting?

Clarke glances over her shoulder, then back at Lexa. “Get some rest,” she says. “If you move around much more, you could pierce an organ with your broken ribs. It’s not a great way to die.” She stands and pulls open the tent flap, pausing in the doorway. “Though I guess if that’s what you really want.” And she’s gone.

Lexa eases herself down onto her back on the cot. Maybe Clarke is bluffing just to get her to stay docile. Even without her dagger, she could fight her way out, she’s sure. Listening to the voices around the fire outside, she counts at least four besides Clarke. 

She sucks in a breath and her lungs feel like they’re going to shatter. Settling back down on the tent, Lexa lets exhaustion take over once more.

***

The days pass in periods of bleary wakefulness and hours of darkness. 

Lexa feels like she is melting away from the inside. She thinks—she _knows_ —when she is conscious enough to know her own thoughts—that death would’ve been far kinder than this.

This feels like the sun is scorching her in her own veins, running setting the gasoline in her blood on fire and watching it burn.

“I can’t give you anything for the pain,” Clarke says by her bedside one night. “Your body is too weak right now.”

The words fade into her mind, fuzzy and blank, and Lexa’s mouth is open and her lungs are on fire but she cannot speak. The screams feel hot inside her mouth.

When the world fades away again, Lexa hears a howl against the night. It’s not until the screaming stops that she realizes the voice is her own.

***

The next time Lexa wakes, the fire is dripping down her forehead, so hot it’s cold and stinging her eyes.

Lexa blinks. The world appears in bare color and deep shadow. Someone hovers over her.

The water returns again. It presses cool to her forehead, giving her so much relief that Lexa almost cries out. She reaches blindly for the source.

“Shh,” a voice says. “You’ve got an awful fever.” 

The voice is familiar. Lexa pushes through the pain to search her hazy thoughts. She brings up an image of a woman with hair the color of sand and metal in her bones.

Clarke, her brain tells her. Lexa tries to form the word on her tongue but her mouth is dry and her lips are cracked and she can barely move them at all.

She must’ve made some sound though, because Lexa can feel Clarke beside her. “I’m here,” Clarke says. She presses the cool washcloth to Lexa’s feverish forehead again before wiping it down her neck, across her collarbone, under her chin and over her shoulders. The cloth leaves a cooling trail across her flushed skin that is quickly replaced by the heat inside her own body, but some relief is better than none.

Lexa’s hand grasps onto something and she squeezes it, hard, to distract herself from the pain, to anchor herself in this sea of fire.

The hand squeezes back, fingers brushing lightly over her wrist, and she hears Clarke say softly again, “I’m here.”

***

When she finally opens her eyes and manages to keep them open for longer than a few shadowy seconds, Lexa feels like she has a new body.

Newer, anyway. One that is only about halfway there, as if discarded for spare parts and then somewhat restored, but not willing to do the whole job, but new nonetheless.

She checks her limbs to make sure she has nothing metal.

The sun is blinding when she stumbles up from her cot and outside the tent. She’d forgotten how bright it was. Has it always been this bright?

Lexa surveys the camp. Several tents set up around the dunes, various gear scattered about. A fire pit in the middle, smoke rising from it in twirls. And just beyond the tents, a massive truck rig without wheels dug into the sand, a gleaming metal box.

Lexa approaches it slowly, leaning on her good leg, her hand at her hip, furious all over again as it dawns on her that she doesn’t have her dagger.

The back of the rig is open. It’s a cargo container, stained with sand and rust, creaking occasionally in the wind. Lexa peers inside.

_Motorcycles._

Six of them in various sizes, some more impressive than others, but all of them—

All of them a potential way out.

Lexa looks around. She grasps the handle on the side of the rig to pull herself up.

Then she’s being lifted away, ripped backward, and her back hits the sand with an all-too-familiar pain. She growls and grabs onto her attacker, hands digging at shoulders and feet kicked under knees, but her attacker has her hand around Lexa’s throat and she looks very, very pissed off.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” The girl says. It’s the one with the sweet voice. Her eyes are lovely and her hair is braided and Lexa was right, she is young—maybe about Clarke’s age, but for some reason she wears it differently. The life they’ve been handed.

“Octavia!”

Clarke’s voice from across the dunes.

Octavia glances away and it’s all the opportunity Lexa needs to flip them, hooking her feet around Octavia’s knees and spinning her into the sand facedown. She kneels on her back, ignores the searing pain in her calf, and holds the girl’s hair like a leash. “Do not touch me,” she says calmly.

“Fucking _hell.”_ Clarke is there, wide-eyed and breathless. She’s wearing simple gray clothes, her tank top thin and revealing the black bandeau underneath, and her belt is slung low on her hips above gray and dirt-harshened pants. 

Lexa is momentarily distracted. 

_“Lexa._ Let her go.”

Lexa ignores her.

Octavia is fuming underneath her. She wrestles against Lexa’s hold, and though she’s taller, she can’t shake Lexa.

“Lexa.” Clarke’s voice is quiet and dangerous. “Let. Her. Go.”

After a few more seconds merely to let it sink in, Lexa finally climbs off the girl and backs away, but only just.

“I told this was a bad idea, Clarke,” Octavia spits.

“Octavia, I’m sorry.” Clarke steps forward and tries to land a hand, her human one, the one with soft skin and healing fingertips, on Octavia’s arm, but she pulls away.

“Deal with this,” Octavia says, jerking her head at Lexa and striding away. 

When she is gone, Lexa simply waits.

Clarke sighs, pressing a hand to her forehead like she’s just broken up a playground fight. She puts her hands on her hips and finds Lexa’s gaze. “Why do you have to do that?”

Lexa raises her chin in question.

“Try to ruin everyone who tries to help you.” Clarke drops her arms and stares at Lexa almost pleadingly.

Lexa’s steely stare is answer enough.

Clarke sighs again. “Come on,” she says. “You need to eat.”

Back at the tent, Lexa sits on the cot, the only familiar place she’s known for however long she’s been here, under Clarke’s watch and apparently her care. Clarke brings her a plate and more water. Lexa resists the urge to tell her that she should be keeping it for herself, stowing it for when she needs it.

It’s been so long since she’s eaten that she nearly vomits at the first bite. Once she pushes it down her throat, however, and swallowed water on top of it, her stomach seems to remember that this is how it’s supposed to be.”

Clarke sits with her, but doesn’t say anything. 

When Lexa finishes the plate, savoring the last sip of water, she finally says, “My dagger.”

“You don’t need it here.”

“Then return it to me so I may leave.”

Clarke is done feeling helpless, it looks like—when she raises her head again she has hardened her expression again. Lexa can’t help but feel like she’s teaching her that. She isn’t sure if she should feel guilty or satisfied.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Lexa raises an eyebrow.

“Your wounds from the crash got infected and then got way worse from the dehydration and starvation. Without medicine, the infection will kill you.” Clarke watches Lexa’s face carefully. “While you’re here at our camp, I’ll treat you. I’ll get you the medicine you need. In return, you’re going to fix our bikes.”

“The ones your friend tried to murder me for simply looking at?”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s all you had in mind. Looking.” Clarke frowns at her. Lexa shrugs. “When you’re healed, and you’ve done your part, then you can leave.” Clarke stands up. She is ready to leave, but she looks like she wants Lexa to acquiesce, to see reason, to thank her or beg her or maybe insult her, but something.

Lexa takes a deep breath. It shudders in her lungs. She looks down at her hands, which are covered in bandages, and feels the tightness of the bandage on her head. Her leg throbs. Her bones ache.

There’s nothing that says she can’t steal one of the bikes as soon as she’s better. She never would’ve been so careless to get caught if she was healthy. Besides, knowing where her next few meals are coming from seems like a decent proposition.

She gives a single nod.

Clarke walks out of the tent and doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading. i do appreciate the comments and kudos so very much!
> 
> you can find me at clarkestrife.tumblr.com.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally getting to the good stuff in this chapter....it's also longer than the first two chapters combined. enjoy.

Lexa starts on the bikes the next morning.

She ignores the other members of the camp, particularly since they all seem to have varying levels of distaste toward her. There’s Octavia, who gives her a pointed glare every time their eyes meet. There’s Abby, the oldest of the group, who has the same eyes as Clarke and wears her long hair in a braid and knows about herbs and medicine and how to make things they do not have. There’s Anya, who does not ever say a word to Lexa but is strong and smart and will fight for them, that much is clear. In fact, the only person Lexa ever sees Anya speak to is Raven, a dark-haired girl with joyous eyes who seems to know her way around an engine but doesn’t seem to _feel_ it like Lexa does; doesn’t think of it as an extension of herself, but rather a problem to be solved.

One day when Lexa has been working alone, she goes to look for more materials. She is fairly sure there’s a scattering of spare parts around the camp; organization is not highly valued here, it seems. Instead, she stumbles upon Raven and Anya behind one of the wrecked trailers, Raven’s knee pressed between Anya’s legs and Anya’s hands grasping at Raven’s ass, encouraging her forward, her face buried in Raven’s hair. In the broad desert daylight they are like a mirage, intertwined and shadowy, but the panting coming from their mouths is so very, very real. 

Lexa blinks in surprise—though she shouldn’t be that surprised, really; she knows companionship runs deep and can manifest in many ways, between many people.

Still, it stirs something in her, makes her ache low in her stomach for the first time in a long time. That night after everyone has gone to bed, Lexa ventures her own hand down under the thinly tied waistband of her pants, burying her fingers in her own warmth with the blankets scratching at her skin.

It’s not quite the same, but it unfolds the tension in her body and sends it skyrocketing down her legs all the way to her toes, her muscles finding release, her breaths ragged until she falls asleep.

Clarke comes to her tent that morning to give her her medicine and see how she’s healing. Lexa’s eyes flicker to Clarke’s when Clarke pulls her pant leg up to check how she’s healing, and Lexa wonders if Clarke has someone in camp that she turns to for that kind of companionship, for the relief that only the distraction of someone else can provide.

When Clarke leaves, and the tent is empty again, Lexa refuses to let herself wonder anymore on the subject.

She focuses on what she’s there to do—what she _has_ to do, but truth be told, it feels good to have the bikes under her hands again. To meld leather and metal and make the most of precious gasoline. She thinks of her skeleton somewhere out there in the desert, buried under the sand, and her heart aches for that bike. It’s funny how Clarke is tied to it now, to her memories of it—the last time she rode it and the first time she starts a new life she can only have because of it.

When she gets the first bike working in just under a week, Raven cheers and slaps her on the back. Lexa almost punches her.

***

At night, she’s on her own.

The camp has a camaraderie that Lexa cannot name. Every night, under the blue gaze of the stars and the soft glow of a fire burning, the women gather to sit together, eat together, laugh and tell stories and talk about nothing at all together. 

Raven brags to Lexa that she created Clarke’s metal arm and Lexa holds back a smile as Clarke grimaces at the memory. Sometimes she watches Raven and Clarke sit side-by-side near the fire, Raven tightening something or loosening something or otherwise tinkering with her arm, her metal hand resting on Raven’s knee, and Lexa’s heart catches in her chest, like it’s slowly coming apart.

Sometimes Anya pulls out an instrument Lexa has never seen before, made of smooth wood and strings that glint in the firelight, and she plays music softly, letting it drift out from her fingertips and across the night. Warnings go off in Lexa’s head, reminding her how the music might as well be a siren for their location, a call out to the desert to come and claim them.

The music is melancholy and lovely, and Anya’s hands are skilled, and everyone is smiling, so Lexa bites back her protests, instead scanning the horizon more carefully before she lets herself be lulled into relaxation by the chords wavering through the night.

Sometimes, when Clarke and Octavia have returned from the scouting missions they go on during the day, bloodied and bruised and wearing darkness in their eyes, the night is quiet with contemplation, and there is no music at all.

***

On this particular night, everyone is in good spirits. The women sit haphazardly around the campfire, resting on pieces of sheet metal or tipped-over tires, their feet warmed by the fire. Lexa sits alone in the sand and watches the fire light up the yellow of Clarke’s hair like it’s made of pure gold, shining and more beautiful than anything has any right to be.

It’s too late for her turn away when Clarke catches her staring. Clarke’s gaze seems to hold a question—not quite like suspicion and not quite like amusement, but something in-between—and Lexa refuses to back down, instead raising her chin in a subtle nod.

The in-between turns more toward a smile on Clarke’s face, and Lexa relaxes.

Normally Lexa listens to conversations that murmur around the camp without participating in any of them, silently sifting through the information as it comes, choosing what to keep and what to discard, just in case she should ever need it. Tonight, however, her hands are tired, her leg is aching, her body is trying to fight the sleepiness of being in the sun all day, and she thinks she can take one night off from listening too close.

Just one night.

The next time Clarke looks at her, Lexa’s gaze is half-lidded and heavy, making a point of flickering down to Clarke’s lips.

When she meets Clarke’s eyes again, she thinks she sees something like understanding pass over her face, even as she is mid-conversation with Octavia. It feels like a pull between them, like the fire is fueling this quiet connection and making Lexa tremble instead of warming her up. It feels like the night could last forever and Lexa would be happy in this space.

But it doesn’t last, as nothing can. The fire breaks down to embers and the chill of the night seeps in and eventually, one by one, the women disappear into their tents, bidding one another goodnight. No one says goodnight to Lexa, but she watches them all the same. She thinks she sees Raven dip into Abby’s tent this time, instead of Anya’s, but she can’t be sure.

Lexa is the last one to return to her tent, despite Octavia fighting off yawns to keep an eye on her. Finally tiring of being under Octavia’s watchful glare, Lexa heads to her tent and strips down to a thin shirt and her underwear, the heat of the fire still flush on her skin despite the cold.

Under the blankets, Lexa wills sleep to come to her, but she knows from the familiar buzzing in her limbs that it will not.

Her hand drifts down to her thighs, skimming them with her fingertips. Her other hand slips under her shirt and palms her own breasts, rolling her nipples between her fingers as she rubs at her underwear to warm herself up. 

Lexa thinks of Clarke in the desert, wild eyes and tan skin and a jaw cut from stone. She thinks of her at the bikes, the fabric of her clothes barely hiding her shape, equal parts lean and curvy. She imagines Clarke here now, Clarke’s human hand pressed against her center, damp through her underwear, and Clarke’s mouth on her breasts and Clarke’s cheek pressed to hers and her fingers insistent, dipping into her like they know exactly what she needs, how many and how fast and how hard.

Lexa bites her lip to muffle her moans, her body writhing in the bed as she gets closer and closer and her hand speeds up, wishing so badly it wasn’t her own. She feels like she could give herself over to Clarke so easily, like her body played like the instrument, singing under Clarke’s hands. Those hands have healed her, woven her skin back together and touched sweat on her brow and softened with every brush of fingertips. Lexa aches for them to know her in the most intimate of ways, the most sensitive of places, and when she finally comes, her shoulders tensed and her head thrown back, Clarke’s name falls from her lips like an admission, half-cried into the night.

Her body finally relaxes, her orgasm fading and drifting through her limbs in waves, and Lexa closes her eyes. It’s only moments later that she hears footsteps in the sand outside.

Lexa’s eyes fly open, grasping for a weapon and finding none—but then the footsteps pass by the front of her tent, toward the campfire, and Lexa hears Clarke’s musical laugh in the quiet night air as she says goodnight to Octavia.

For a moment, Lexa hesitates.

There’s no way Clarke heard her. 

Lexa knows she couldn’t have been that loud, even in the rush of endorphins that clouded her head and made her mind foggy and unable to see through the haze of Clarke’s image behind her eyes.

There’s no _way_ Clarke heard her.

And even if she did, Lexa decides, pulling the blankets closer around her, what she’s going to do about it?

***

Clarke finds Lexa with her hands covered in oil, goggles over her eyes, and a screwdriver behind her ear.

Lexa hears the footsteps in between bursts of the engine she’s knuckle-deep in, trying to screw in one of the parts that simply doesn’t fit. It _has_ to fit, though; they don’t exactly have endless supplies out here, so that means making things work that might not work otherwise. Putting together pieces that, in different circumstances, wouldn’t make sense at all.

A shadow falls across Lexa, blocking her light. Lexa frowns and pulls her goggles down, expecting to see Raven returning with some more scrap metal she’s fashioned into something useful, or even Anya silently bringing her water, which she does on occasion without ever being asked. Lexa doesn’t say thank you and Anya doesn’t need her to. They nod at each other, sometimes, and Lexa thinks it’s probably the clearest communication she’s managed with anyone.

Instead, it’s Clarke, hands on her hips and a look on her face like she’d rather be anywhere else.

When Clarke doesn’t speak, Lexa finally raises to her feet, wincing slightly at the ache in her knees from being in one position for too long, and matches Clarke’s stance. “Yes?”

Lexa can see Clarke glance at the bikes behind her, at the tools strewn about and bits of metal and rubber everywhere, trying to do the math in her head.

Rolling her eyes, Lexa saves her the trouble. “Those two are good to go,” she says, nodding at the corner of the trailer. “This engine is giving me trouble. Once I get it working it shouldn’t be too long.”

“How long?” Clarke’s eyes finally find Lexa’s.

Lexa tilts her head just slightly, a question playing at her lips.

Clarke doesn’t justify the unasked question with an answer. Lexa takes advantage of the silence between them to let her gaze flicker over the rest of Clarke, catching the places where she doesn’t normally hold tension, but are now wound up tight: her fingers, gripping her hips a little too hard, her stance too stiff, her jaw set and barely moving when she speaks. For a moment, the words _what’s wrong?_ nearly tumble out of Lexa’s lips, but she holds them back. She’s not naive enough to think that Clarke would answer that one, either.

“It takes as long as it takes,” Lexa says finally. When Clarke still doesn’t respond, Lexa takes that to mean the conversation is over, and she gets back to work, knees on the dusty ridges of the trailer, grease streaked on her cheekbones.

Clarke sits on the edge of the trailer, legs half-hanging off the side, one foot propped on the ramp. She watches Lexa take the engine apart and put it back together again. 

Lexa doesn’t say anything, and neither does Clarke.

They stay like that until the sun goes down, sitting together and at the same time not really together at all, nothing but the quiet and the occasional clink of metal between them.

***

The evening brings with it the question of tomorrow, rather than the promise.  
 Lexa can feel it in the energy; she hasn’t asked anyone and no one has said anything to her, but from listening to the voices around camp and reading the tension in the air, she knows that tomorrow, Clarke and Octavia are going on a scouting mission, that they’re taking the two bikes Lexa has fixed, that they don’t expect to come back quickly.

Perhaps, Lexa thinks, they don’t expect to come back at all.

She swallows down the thought with a gulp of the heavy alcohol being passed around in a rusted canteen.

It’s not that the atmosphere is depressing; rather, it’s a little too bright, the laughter a little too loud, Clarke’s hand lingering too long on Raven’s knee. Lexa takes a longer drink before passing the canteen to Anya. There’s an ache in her body that has settled somewhere deep, brought on by the desert and just as never-ending. Normally she can ignore it. Keeping her hands busy helps. Knowing that she’s probably not going to die today helps. But tonight, her muscles are at once restless and sore from the days in the sun, and the night feels too short for how long they all need to recover.

When Abby goes to bed she hugs Clarke tighter than usual, for a bit longer than usual, presses her cheek to Clarke’s and whispers something in her ear. Clarke and Octavia will be gone before sunrise; their bags are already slung on the back of the bikes locked tight in the trailer. Octavia rests her head in Raven’s lap and falls asleep to the flicker of the fire. Anya’s eyes flicker over to them before she eventually disappears. 

When Clarke stumbles away, Lexa wonders if she should say something. Do something.

Goodbye doesn’t feel right. She doesn’t want to add to the illusion that this mission is any different than the others. Hell, she doesn’t even know why it might be. But her chest still feels tight when she thinks about waking up tomorrow with almost half the camp gone.

Lexa bids Raven goodnight. Raven’s eyes flicker up to her briefly with a smile as she strokes Octavia’s hair. 

Lexa knows she timed her drinking wrong as she walks toward her own tent; she’s on the verge of too drunk to sleep without the room spinning. If the evening was still going strong like it would be another time, with laughing and music and warm company, she’d be at the perfect point, but as it is, she can’t quite stomach the thought of being surrounded by total darkness right now. She walks just past her tent to stand on the edge of the dunes facing the moon. 

Below her, something moves in the moonlight.

Lexa’s heart pounds. She watches the shadow with a careful eye, unable to pinpoint its exact shape in the places between light and dark. It skims over the dunes, then makes a strange sound—metal on metal, accompanied by an _"Ooof.”_

Slowly releasing the breath she had been holding in, Lexa rolls her eyes.

She’s sure now; it’s Clarke, her frame half-stumbling over the sands, making more noise than Lexa thought possible for a single human being. Just as she’s ready to slide down the dunes and attempt to rescue Clarke from herself, she sees Clarke pause at the top of the surrounding hills of sand, standing tall against the sky.

Lexa feels breathless.

Clarke’s frame is strong, stalwart, silhouetted with the stars in front of her. Moonbeams outline her body, every curve, every bend. From here, the machinery of her arm is lost in the shadows and feels every bit like an extension of her, like it was always meant to be this way. Like she was always meant to be this way: shaped from the way it all shines.

Lexa takes a step forward. She can’t help herself. The reminders in her brain, the protests, the warnings—they’re dulled by the alcohol and swiftly taken away by the night wind. 

Before she knows it, she’s only a few feet away from Clarke.

For a moment she simply stands there, watching, closer now to see the details in her outline—the dips of her waist, the tears of fabric. The way she shifts her weight back and forth.

“Are you just going to stand there?” Clarke asks without turning around. Her voice is huskier even than normal, hoarse and sand-swept.

Lexa feels her cheeks burn. She notices the canteen swinging from Clarke’s metal hand and clanging against her fingers.

Lexa steps forward and reaches for it. “Don’t you have to drive tomorrow?”

Clarke shrugs. She puts up a half-hearted fight when Lexa unwinds the strap of it from her fingers, the metal cold as the night itself, not warmed by alcohol flowing through her blood like the rest of her.

Lexa glances up at the camp on the dunes above them and sighs. Neither of them can really make it up the side of the dune easily in their current state, so all they can do is wait it out. 

She sits. Clarke settles down roughly beside her.

They look at the stars together, the wind brushing their hair back from their shoulders. Lexa shivers with the chill of the air. Clarke is so, so warm next to her and Lexa isn’t even touching her. She can feel her, feel it radiating off of her like the fire itself, and she wants, briefly, to collapse in that warmth and never come up for air.

“I heard you,” Clarke murmurs.

Lexa looks up.

“The other night.” Clarke turns to face her now, though Lexa continues sitting straight ahead. She chances a glance at Clarke and sees the lazy smile toying at Clarke’s lips, her eyes bright and a bit unfocused. Lexa swallows and steels herself, a subtle shift of her shoulders, a push forward of her chest, trying to pretend like Clarke’s warm exhale on her bare shoulder doesn’t affect her.

It takes Lexa a full moment to draw in a deep breath before she replies, “And?”

She thinks she sees Clarke shift out of the corner of her eye, but she can’t be sure, and she can’t look at Clarke right now. She knows she’s close, closer than she was before, and she thinks she’s imagining it but God, what if she isn’t—Clarke’s lips on her shoulder as she murmur, “And I heard you say my name.”

Though she has no intention of denying it, hearing the words in Clarke’s sleepy, night-husk voice makes something in Lexa’s stomach twist, low and hot, and there’s a thousand things running through her mind but she can’t focus on a single one, so she silences them all when she kisses Clarke.

Clarke is expecting it; that much is obvious in the way her mouth moves under Lexa’s, lips parting to steal her breath away and sinking into this kiss like she’s been trying to draw it out of Lexa since they met. They shift on the sand and there’s warm skin under fingertips and the shiver of touches under their shirts and suddenly Clarke is climbing onto Lexa’s lap, bracketing her legs on either side, digging her knees into the sand and gripping the side of Lexa’s face with both hands. She drags one hand down her neck and lets her fingers find Lexa’s pulse point, fluttering over it, skimming her collarbone and the thin rag of her shirt hem, and Lexa just lets Clarke’s hands do what they want, what she wants. 

When they break for air Clarke doesn’t go far. She rests her forehead against Lexa’s, panting into her mouth, and steals another messy, captured kiss before she pulls back again. When Lexa opens her eyes, Clarke is framed by the moon, haloing her hair and casting her in blue shadow against golden locks that have become twisted and mussed with Lexa’s hands. Lexa doesn’t remember fisting her fingers in Clarke’s hair but the effect of it shows, along with Clarke’s pink cheeks and parted lips, her eyes wild and now completely, completely focused.

Lexa feels like maybe she was kept alive just so she could take in this sight: Clarke, kissed breathless and painted in soft golds and blues.

The moment between them goes for long enough, just sitting and breathing and touching, that Clarke looks like she’s about to say something, so Lexa captures her mouth with her own before the words can spill from it. The press of her lips seems to shock the electricity back into them both and it starts to feel frantic, Clarke grinding down on her lap looking for something to feel, to steady her, and Lexa barely able to keep up with how much she wants Clarke.

Clarke’s fingers skim her stomach, trace her back, and when they steal under Lexa’s shirt to dip into the waistband of her pants, something lights up in Lexa, dragging her back to reality.

Lexa breaks the kiss. “Clarke—”

“Don’t.” Clarke’s voice is barely audible in her ear. Lexa feels overwhelmed with the heat of her cheek pressed to Clarke’s and her mouth on her neck and her hands going lower—

Lexa swallows and tries again. _“Clarke.”_

The sag of Clarke’s shoulders makes her ache. “It’s not that I don’t—” Lexa tries to explain and fails. She presses her lips together, unwilling to finish that sentence, unable to reveal just how much of herself is laid open and bare at the end of it. The only things that come after that sentence are things Lexa can’t take back, her fears and her shuttered heart and the way Clarke breaks it all open with nothing but a glance.

Clarke watches her, her expression hovering between rejection and hesitation. When Lexa can’t find the words, Clarke puts forward her own words between them.

“This is our only chance,” Clarke says quietly, her fingers clutching at Lexa’s hips.

Lexa furrows her brow. “What—“ she searches Clarke’s face. Then it dawns on her, heavy and crippling. “Clarke. _You’re coming back.”_

When Clarke turns her head away, hair falling in her face, Lexa thinks she catches a glint of tears in Clarke’s eyes, but when she turns back to her, the glint is gone and her expression is all acceptance. “You don’t know that,” she states.

Lexa presses her cheek to Clarke’s, her mouth warm at her ear, trying like hell to absorb Clarke’s fears if it’s possible. She revels in the simple touch of her skin to Clarke’s, all softness and breathlessness and stolen moments. “You’re coming back,” Lexa whispers tightly into her hair. She whispers it not just to Clarke, but to the desert, as a promise, a warning.

_If you take her, you will pay the price._

The sands swish by their feet, fleeting and careless as ever. Lexa fights back a shiver.

Shifting Clarke off her lap, Lexa doesn’t let her stray farther than their fingers loosely woven together, not wanting Clarke to feel anymore rejection than she thinks she’s already gotten. She stands, the alcohol dissolved from her system, her limbs just tired now. Just _tired._

Lexa leads them both to her tent. The night is so, so quiet.

When they climb into bed, Clarke doesn’t protest. Lexa’s cot is hardly big enough for them both, but they make it work, fitting their bodies under the blankets.

Lexa lays on her side and feels briefly, strangely at a loss—she doesn’t know that Clarke would want to be held, but she doesn’t want her to feel alone, either.

After a few moments of shifting, the only sounds the rustling of blankets and their breathing, Clarke turns on her side too, facing away, pressing her back to Lexa’s like they can sink into each other, protected on all sides. She is warm, and real, and she is trembling, and Lexa reaches back to soothe a hand over Clarke’s thigh.

The darkness envelops them and soothe their wounds—the ones they cannot see.

When Lexa wakes, Clarke is gone.

***

All day, Lexa finds things to do. Parts to fix. Pieces to put together. She screws in the same bolt so many times she strips it and renders it useless.

She throws the wrench down and pulls up her shirt, wiping her face, covering it for just a moment. Just a breath.

The sun is ruthless above her, but Lexa can’t bring herself to steal away to the cool darkness of her tent right now. She forces herself to stay in the heavy heat of the afternoon until it slips into evening.

She eventually runs out of daylight.

Lexa heads to the makeshift wash bin they have and cleans herself as best she can; water is too precious to waste but Abby has concoctions that smell sort of like soap and they prickle against her skin, leaving her feeling like something is tugging at her, always.

Abby is at the fire tonight, standing over a pot of stew that broils and smells earthy and warm. Raven hands her various spices at Abby’s request. She’s been tending to some of the plants they’ve painstakingly grown in a sort of greenhouse under the sun, using them sparsely. Only on nights where they have a reason to do things differently.

Lexa, Anya and Raven gather their bowls first; Abby insists on spooning it out to them before she takes her own. They sit in their normal spots by the fire, but that makes it worse—it makes the absences, the open spaces, even more glaring.

Lexa doesn’t know how long she stares at the flames, just that she feels Abby sit beside her, her presence eerily similar to Clarke’s. Where Clarke’s energy is confident, bright like the sunshine color of her hair, Abby’s is more grounded, quiet, just as strong but not quite as obvious.

Still, Lexa jumps when she feels Abby’s hand nudge her leg.

“Can I?” Abby’s eyes are soft, lit by the fire, her eyebrows raised.

Lexa actually fumbles for a moment, having no idea what she’s talking about, before she realizes. _Oh._ She pulls up her pant leg to her show the healing wound to Abby.

Abby’s finger skitter across it, tilting Lexa’s leg to get a better look in the firelight. She makes a hum of satisfaction. “It’s healing nicely,” she says.

“Really?” Lexa says before she can stop herself. The scar is mangled from the quick stitch job Clarke had to do that night, and though it doesn’t bother her, she wouldn't call it nice by any means.

A hint of a smile plays at Abby’s lips. “I know it doesn’t look pretty, but you’re lucky. If it was any deeper, the infection might not have been stoppable.”

Lexa considers grumbling about how if Clarke hadn’t crashed her bike, she wouldn’t have had to worry about an infection in the first place, but decides against it.

“Did you…” Lexa tries to find the words on her tongue. Conversation isn’t her strong suit and she doesn’t like to waste words, but she realizes Abby might need that right now, with her daughter in the mystery of the desert. “Did you teach Clarke?”

“You mean healing?” Lexa nods. “Yes,” Abby says. “I was a doctor, once. Well, I guess I still am, but it’s not quite the same.” Her shoulders tense slightly as she rests her elbows on her knees. Lexa studied the contours of her face, trying to find the arches and the draws of Clarke. “Clarke always had a knack for it. She comforts people, you know. She always has.” Abby sits up a little straighter, as if realizing that she’s dangerously close to speaking in the past tense. She turns away from the fire and paints a thin smile on her face. “She asked me to check on you while she’s gone. Where’s the other wound?” 

Lexa lets that sink in for a moment _—Clarke asked me to check on you—while she’s gone—_ before she pushes those thoughts away and indicates the side of her head.

Abby pulls Lexa’s hair back from her face and turns her chin to get a better look. Lexa resists only for a moment. She knows Abby is handling her as a patient, not a person, but it still feels too close, too quick.

She remembers Clarke in the middle of the night, her hands careful on Lexa’s skin, her touch the easiest thing in the world.

Abby lets her go. “This one will be fine. In a few months you probably won’t even notice the scar.” She stands and brushes her hands on her legs idly. “Remind me tomorrow morning to give you your medicine if…” she stops herself.

_If Clarke isn’t back._

Abby swallows, puts her hands on her hips, and barely gives Lexa a nod before she disappears into her tent.

The wound on her leg, though it’s closed, though it’s healing, seems to burn fresh that night in the place Clarke first touched her. 

Sleep doesn’t come easily.

***

It’s three more days before they hear the sound of motorcycles gunning over the horizon.

Lexa’s heart pounds. She looks up from her work as soon as she hears it. Raven is already up and practically running toward the direction of the sound. Lexa leaps up and puts a hand on her shoulder, tugging her back.   
“What the hell?” Raven isn’t angry, but she shrugs her off, never taking her gaze off the distance source of the noise.

“Could be anyone,” Lexa mutters. Raven glares at her, but she stops and waits a few feet ahead of her, knowing she’s right. They can’t be too careful. Behind them, Anya puts a hand over her eyes to shield the sun.

Abby is the last to come out of her tent. Her gaze is unreadable, but Lexa can feel her hope, terrifying and barely restrained.

The sound grows louder. It rips the air like a chainsaw, blazing and searing and cutting away everything in front of it. The women watch. Lexa’s heart beats faster.

It feels like hours pass as they wait for the riders to reach the camp. Their tracks are swirled through the dunes, buzzing and clear-cut. 

Raven is the first to run to them when they come to a grinding halt in the sand.

She throws her arms around Octavia, breathlessly happy, and Octavia barely has a chance to reciprocate before Raven is grabbing Clarke, too. It’s a flurry of movement, of sand kicked up with footsteps, of exchanges and greetings, but Lexa doesn’t miss the slight hiss when Raven squeezes Clarke tightly, and judging from Abby’s change in expression, she doesn’t either.

“Let me see.” The command is as much mother as it is healer, and Clarke is powerless to it. She pulls up the edge of her shirt to reveal a gaping gash. Raven gasps.

Octavia releases Anya from her hug, but she doesn’t let go—instead, she grips Anya’s arm for support, her left leg not quite able to do the job. Raven notices, turns to Octavia and opens her mouth, but Clarke speaks first.

“Mom, it’s okay—” Clarke breathes, before she collapses.

Lexa can’t say anything, can’t even make a sound as Abby barks out orders. It’s a different kind of blur then—struggling to help Octavia and Clarke into the tents, rushing to get medicine, to lay them down, to figure this out.

Lexa picks up the bikes and wheels them into the trailer. She examines them for any hint of what might’ve happened, but beyond a few scratches, they’re as intact as they were when they left.

Clarke’s howl of pain echoes in the tent. Lexa clenches her teeth. She slams down the trailer and swiftly locks it.

***

Lexa doesn't see Clarke beyond brief glimpses over the next few days. She has a feeling Abby won’t let her out of her sight, having nearly lost her to the desert, and Clarke only once finds Lexa’s gaze as she’s hobbling back to Abby’s tent.

The look in Clarke’s eyes is dark, hollow, and it has nothing to do with her injury. Lexa fights back a shudder. It’s like seeing a ghost move past the fire.

***

Lexa is in her tent avoiding the heavy heat of the time just before sunset, having worked on the bikes for most of the day. The light is both all and nothing inside her tent as the sun descends below the horizon, leaving the sky pink and no shadows anywhere. Lexa rests on her cot. Octavia has fared better in her recovery; she’s started to seem normal again, moving more easily around camp, though sometimes with a barely perceptible limp. She speaks, she smiles. She laughs.

Clarke enters the tent without a word. Lexa can see who it is without needing to look up, but she can’t help herself. It’s been so long that she thinks something must be wrong. She sits up on her cot and finds Clarke’s silhouette in the doorway. She can feel something that comes into the tent with Clarke—something like that silhouette. Something rumbling and dark and bitter.

“I need your help,” Clarke says. Her voice trembles. It’s the first time Lexa has heard Clarke’s voice since she came back from the desert with the blood drained from her face.

Lexa doesn’t answer right away. She doesn’t trust herself to. There are things gaping in her chest—shaped like Clarke’s absence, decimated with worry that’s been frozen up inside her for days, unable to ask after her, not knowing if she was getting worse or better.

And, if Lexa is honest, there’s guilt residing there too, right next to the thump of her heart. The memory of Clarke at her bedside when she was near death, and her absence at Clarke’s when she was much the same.

She swallows.

 _“Lexa.”_ Clarke crosses into her line of vision.

Lexa hesitates. Then, she swings her legs off the cot and gets up to follow Clarke.

They end up at the far end of camp—which isn’t terribly far, but it’s at the tent on the very edge of the dune—Clarke’s tent.

Lexa has never been inside it before. It’s far more lived-in that Lexa’s; it has things that are entirely and can _only_ be Clarke’s—clothes, some jewelry, trinkets, a few tools, bits of useless items, and other things. On the edge of a simple table are a few pieces of parchment and a stick of charcoal.

Clarke has her back to Lexa, as if she’s forgotten she asked her there.

“Clarke.” It’s a question, but Lexa doesn’t phrase it as such. She searches for the words. “Are you—”

Whirling around, Lexa barely has time to see Clarke’s expression, young and scared and purposeful and heady and so many things all at once, before her mouth is pressed to Lexa’s and her hands are fisting in Lexa’s shirt and they’re nearly knocked off-balance with the suddenness of it.

At first, it’s utter relief. It sweeps her back to the cold desert night with Clarke in her lap and the first time she saw Clarke with her eyes blazing against warpaint and her gun heavy in her hands.

And then it’s something else—something sweet. Lexa remembers Abby’s words. _She comforts people._

_She always has._

Lexa is caught up in the sensation—in Clarke’s lips capturing hers, her tongue licking at Lexa’s, the breath stolen from her lungs, and it’s feverish and too much and not enough. Lexa grips Clarke’s waist with one hand to keep herself upright, her other hand useless at her side, not wanting to graze Clarke’s wound accidentally, the rough bandages poking out from under her shirt. Clarke’s hands are in her hair, on either side of her neck, her thumbs grazing her jaw, and when she kisses her, it’s like they’re both about to drown.

It takes several moments for Lexa’s head to clear enough of the fog of _Clarke_ to pull back, breathless and strained and staring at her.

“Your injury,” Lexa says. “I don’t want to hurt—”

“You won’t,” Clarke says, her pupils blown and her hair mussed and looking downright obscene when the words fall from her kiss-swollen lips. _“Touch me.”_ Lexa’s stomach flips at the words. Clarke punctuates the word _touch_ with a soft bite to Lexa’s jaw, her skin hot and her breathing echoing in Lexa’s ear and Lexa can barely fucking think.

“Clarke,” Lexa says, somewhat helplessly.

“I need your help,” Clarke says.

“What do you need?” Lexa asks hoarsely. Her voice doesn’t even sound like her own; it sounds like secrets buried in the sand.

“I healed you,” Clarke says, biting down again, and this time it feels like she breaks skin, as if to show how easily she can undo what she’s done to Lexa.

She can’t, Lexa knows. What Clarke has done to her, the way she’s changed how it feels to breathe and wrapped an ache around her heart, will never be undone.

“Now you’re going to heal me,” Clarke says, and she kisses her again and this time it’s less like drowning and more like leaping out of the water, fresh and soaring toward the sun.

There is no water here, but Lexa imagines this is what it would feel like.

Like she was meant for this.

***

Their first time is in that deep afternoon, hands tearing at clothes and discarding them in the sand, their bodies clutching at each other in the tent. Lexa is unable to even unbutton Clarke’s pants, let alone make it to the bed, before she has her hand past Clarke’s underwear. She drops her forehead to Clarke’s shoulder with a gasp at the feeling and strokes once, twice at Clarke’s center before Clarke hisses and grips Lexa’s wrist, pushing at her roughly.

Lexa gets the hint. She makes it quick, bordering on painful, her fingers setting a hard rhythm. Selfishly, she wants to savor this—it’s happened so fast she feels like her head is spinning—but that’s not why Clarke asked her and it certainly isn’t what she wants.

She gives Clarke what she wants.

***

With time, Clarke’s body heals, but there is still a wound left open, somewhere.

Lexa does not ask Clarke what wounds her, and Clarke does not tell her.

All she knows is that when the sun goes down and dinner is over, or often before it’s begun, when the everyone at the camp is milling about and voices can be heard floating over the fire and someone somewhere laughs and it feels like everything is quieting down, Lexa undresses Clarke in the waning light and learns the language of her body, the way it speaks to her touch.

She always takes care of Clarke first. Clarke doesn’t ask her to, never would, but every time she is with Clarke on her cot, under scratchy woolen blankets, she draws sounds from her that crash against Lexa’s fingers when she puts her hand over Clarke’s mouth to keep the others from hearing.

Clarke asked for her help, so she gives it.

It’s different every time. It’s roughness in the way they claw at each other, gentle in the whispers of prayers and songs against their skin, fiery in the way the tent heats up after the long days, that heat finally breaking when the sun goes down and forcing them closer still, stealing warmth from each other.

Sometimes Lexa doesn’t lay her down; sometimes she sits up on the bed and presses her breasts to Clarke’s back and wraps an arm around her waist as Clarke grips her knees with Lexa’s fingers inside her. She drops her head back on Lexa’s shoulder and tries to stay quiet, whimpers through her mouth drawn tight. Sometimes Lexa’s hand cups her jaw and her thumb finds its way between Clarke’s teeth, Clarke taking her hands in everywhere, biting down and searing through Lexa like fire. Lexa draws Clarke’s hair back from her neck when she comes, returning the bite when she sinks her teeth into on the muscle at the top of Clarke’s shoulder. As they fall asleep, Lexa trails her fingertips over the bite marks, the neat indents in Clarke’s skin, and by morning they have faded.

Sometimes Clarke is in her lap, arms wrapped around Lexa’s neck and their mouths messy against each other and she grinds down against Lexa’s hand, rolling her hips slowly until neither of them can stand it and she has to bury her face in Lexa’s hair to keep from crying out. That leaves marks, too. 

Sometimes it’s simple and quiet and they face each other on the bed, hands everywhere, lips exploring each other’s skin, like they can’t decide where to begin.

Rarely, they come together, perfectly synced and breathing each other’s energy like they’re connected everywhere they touch, and in those moments Lexa thinks she has begun her new life all over again, because life without knowing Clarke the way she does wasn’t life at all.

It was nothing but sand and the sound of the engine.

***

The first time Lexa starts to realize that maybe—maybe this is more than healing or forgetting or disappearing—the first time Clarke touches her in a way that isn’t about pain or pleasure but just about _Lexa_ —that time comes a few weeks into their arrangement.

Lexa wakes to Clarke crawling on top of her and pressing kisses to her throat. She swallows against Clarke’s mouth, her brain fighting through the haze of sleep to figure out what’s going on. As natural as anything, her hands come up to hold Clarke’s hips, running up and down the sides of her body like they belong there, touching her, always.

“You never told me,” Clarke mumbles against her shoulder. Lexa is wearing a thin sleep shirt that is already torn at the neckline where Clarke got her teeth on it last week. With her eyelids heavy and her body slowly waking up under Clarke’s touch, Lexa can barely comprehend much at all.

“What?” she says sleepily. She blinks at her. The tent comes into her periphery, sunlight streaming in. Lexa realizes she’s slept past sunrise for the first time in weeks.

“You never told me,” Clarke says, leaning back just slightly from where she’s braced herself on her hands on either side of Lexa’s head. “If it was everything you imagined.” She shifts her weight to her knees where she brackets Lexa’s waist, one hand coming up to stroke Lexa’s thigh under the sheets. The thought of the work awaiting her in the searing sunlight, and the look on Raven’s face when Lexa appears late to said work, all immediately disappear in favor of Lexa closing her eyes and trying not to arch into Clarke’s touch so easily.

It’s a shock of hot and cold, fire on her left side with Clarke’s hand skimming her hip and ice on her right side, metal fingers braced against her. It’s Clarke breathing into her ear, feeling every shudder of her body and her face buried in Lexa’s hair, like just touching her is too much for Clarke to handle. Like she’s _drunk_ on it. Like a mirage coming true.

Lexa moans and she can’t even be embarrassed about it because Clarke is making her way down Lexa’s body, disappearing under the sheets, blonde locks trailing Lexa’s thighs. 

“Did you imagine it like this?” Clarke murmurs inches away from her center, tongue tracing the outline. “Did you imagine my mouth on you?” As if to demonstrate, she presses her lips to slick heat and Lexa growls, twisting her head and biting down on the sheets mussed at her shoulders. “Or was it my fingers inside you that made you say my name?” The words fall from Clarke’s mouth like secrets, like sin, and Lexa thinks she would say anything, promise anything if it meant Clarke would never stop.

Clarke takes care of Lexa first that morning, refusing to let Lexa _really_ touch her until she’s made Lexa say her name again and again, sometimes breathless, sometimes half-growled, sometimes etched silent on her lips.

***

Lexa wheels one of the bikes out of the truck and onto the sand, getting ready to test the brake lines, when she notices Abby watching her.

To her credit, Abby doesn’t look away; she glances at Lexa and then back at where she works at a table nearby, drying flowers and crushing up herbs into small paper packets. A few moments later, Lexa feels Abby’s gaze return to her. 

She knows unequivocally in this moment that Abby _knows._

About Clarke. About _Lexa_ and Clarke.

The thought shouldn’t faze Lexa; she and Clarke don’t announce their nights together but they don’t exactly go out of their way to hide them, either. The camp is small. The people are few. There are only so many places to keep secrets. Raven and Anya certainly don’t make any attempt to shield themselves.

Still, it weighs on her. Abby’s gaze. Lexa rolls her shoulders and stretches as if she can shake the heaviness of it away.

Later that night, when Clarke lays on her stomach beside her, having pushed the furs off because they were too warm, when Lexa’s hand is on her bare back absentmindedly as she tries to relax enough to fall asleep, Lexa realizes why it bothers her so much. And in turn, why Abby even cares.

Because nothing in this life, this desert, this desolate situation, is sure. And yet, in the uncertainty, she and Clarke have chosen each other— _somehow._ In some sort of way.

And Lexa wants to be certain.

Before she knows what she’s doing, Lexa is out of bed, stealing one of the spare blankets to wrap around herself, and stepping out into the moonlight.

It’s not as cold as it normally is in the dead silence of midnight; Lexa doesn’t know what the changing weather means, if anything. She can hear the soft whistles of nocturnal creatures scattered throughout the plains, the wind unsettling brush and tumbleweeds and sending them on a journey over the desert lands. She can hear someone snoring a few tents away.

She can hear Clarke’s footsteps as she shuffles out of the tent and up beside her, rubbing her eyes. “What are you doing?” Clarke mumbles. Her voice is so full of softness and sleep that Lexa almost turns them around and draws her back to bed, but something, be it the pull of the moonlight or its glow on Clarke’s skin, shining against the metal that holds her shoulder in its place, something tugs at her.

After a beat, Lexa says, “You do not need my help, Clarke. Whatever you face, you are perfectly capable of handling it alone.”

Clarke stares at her, as if her sleep-addled brain is trying to process this. “What are you saying?”

Lexa turns to Clarke to see her fully. Clarke is still naked, her breasts high and full and casting shadows down her body. Her slim curves are achingly perfect in their shape. Lexa swallows. She forces her eyes up to Clarke’s, which are focused directly on her, trying to read between her words. “I mean to say that…” Lexa takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if I’m helping you,” she confesses. She swallows again. Her throat feels as dry as the desert stretched before them. “You do not need me, but—you may _have_ me. If you want.”

Clarke’s gaze softens. She searches Lexa’s expression as if trying to see the hidden meaning, the intent she can’t decipher, but Lexa has never had those—she wears her intents on her sleeve and she does not apologize for them, no matter how they are received.

This, though. This makes Lexa tremble, and not from the wind against her bare skin.

Clarke steps forward. She presses her body to Lexa’s and Lexa opens the blanket she has wrapped around herself, enveloping Clarke in it so they are warmed together, circling her arms around Clarke’s back and shivering at the feeling of their chests pressed together, Clarke’s nipples hardened against hers in the cold and the warmth.

“Can’t you be something I need _and_ want?” Clarke murmurs into her shoulder.

Lexa watches the horizon over Clarke’s shoulder. She nuzzles her cheek against Clarke’s hair, enveloped in the scent of desert flowers and soft herbs.

She doesn’t know the answer, not really.

But perhaps it’s written in the space between them, only readable when they’re pressed together, hand to hand and mouth to mouth. Lexa knows she will look for it in every touch, everywhere she finds Clarke’s skin. She won’t stop looking until she finds the answer.

What she doesn’t know is that in only a few hours, fire and ash and metal will rain down upon them, and they will be buried by far more than questions and heartbeats. 

It will be morning soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading. i do appreciate the comments and kudos so very much!
> 
> you can find me at clarkestrife.tumblr.com
> 
> p.s. if one of you insanely talented artists draws lexa as max and clarke as furiosa, i will love you with the passion of a thousand suns.


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